FRANTIC EFFORTS TO PUT OUT BUSHFIRES  

The All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party’s efforts to resolve their internal conflicts remain stressful, writes Bolaji Adebiyi  

The two leading political parties, the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party, are still busy putting out the bushfires inhibiting their efforts to hit the campaign trail. Though the other two main ones, the Labour Party and the New Nigeria Peoples Party, have also not shown a structured head start, the challenges in the APC and the PDP are of concern because they threaten to deny the electorate the opportunity to interrogate their programmes and plans as its attention is distracted by the internal squabbles.  

There were rays of hope earlier in the week as the big parties held crucial meetings whose outcomes indicated the softening of positions by the warring camps. On Tuesday, APC governors met with the National Working Committee to resolve their dispute with the Presidential Campaign Council over the campaign team list. Speaking separately after the meeting in Abuja, Atiku Bagudu, the governors’ chairman, and Abdullahi Adamu, the party’s national chairman, said they had decided to back Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate, even as the issues around the list were being fine-tuned.  

In the PDP whose Board of Trustees’ delegation met with Nyesom Wike, the governor of Rivers State and the leader of the rebellion in the main opposition party, there was a similar middle-of-the-road resolution. Led by Adolphus Wabara, a former president of the Senate, the BoT delegation sought to make peace with the aggrieved governor who has with him four others on the party’s platform.  

Perhaps applying his skills as a diplomat, Wabara was measured in his report of the outcome of the hours of meeting with Wike in the garden city called Port-Harcourt. He said though the parley was inconclusive, it was, nevertheless, a work in progress. He said they now have some information with which to work to achieve a resolution, adding that a further meeting in Abuja is needed to seal a deal. Rendering his own account, the governor agreed that the possibility for peace existed and that what was important was the unity of the party which is required for it to win the impending presidential election even as he reiterated his group’s decision to remain within the fold.  

Not many details about what transpired in the meeting have been divulged but given the solemnity with which Wike spoke, it is safe to say that the reality of the need for détente has set in. For as the campaigns opened last week, it became clearer to both sides of the divide that something had to give otherwise the stage would be set for mutually assured destruction that would leave everyone worsted.  

The reality of the situation is that Wike’s minimum demand for peace is unrealisable. He wants Iyorchia Ayu, the national chairman, to stand down to balance the power and zoning equation within the party hierarchy. As he has been told severally, this is not going to happen for both political and constitutional reasons. He apparently gave the same condition on Tuesday and it must have been reiterated that the chairman would have to deliver the candidate before a rebalancing of the zoning arrangement could be done.  

The fact of the matter is that both the convention and constitution of the party cannot sustain Wike’s position. Neither of the two prohibits both the presidential candidate and the national chairman from coming from the same region. What they restrain is for the president and the national chairman to come from the same zone.  

In 2006, when Umaru Yar’Adua from the North-west emerged as the presidential candidate, Ahmadu Ali from the North-central was the national chairman. He led the campaign for the general election. Once Yar’Adua was inaugurated on 29 May 2007 a national convention was convened two months later at which Vincent Ogbulafor from the South-east was returned as the national chairman. This was the balance until the president died in office in 2010 and his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan from the South-south, ascended leadership.  

The ascendancy of Jonathan to power disrupted, for a brief period, the zonal balance as he inherited Ogbulafor, who was later replaced by Okwesilieze Nwodo, as the national chairman. But as soon as the president was sworn in on 29 May 2011, a special national convention was held months later to rebalance the power equation in the party with Bamanga Tukur, a former governor from the North-east, emerging as the national chairman.  

No doubt, these facts have been presented at every negotiation with the aggrieved camp but it remains intransigent. This obviously has left Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate, to make a decision to move ahead, announcing the presidential campaign team and releasing the campaign timetable despite the withdrawal by Wike’s camp.  

It had been clear from the outbreak of hostility that Wike’s options were limited and that his intransigence could not be tolerated for too long. The party’s strategy would appear to be to wear him out with a lengthy dialogue while the candidate progresses with his electioneering, knowing full well that he would in the next five months have to work out a strategy to manage the risk of losing substantial votes from Rivers State and those of Wike’s allies.  

What, however, could not be managed by the party is the heavy war chest available to the Rivers State governor, which if placed at the disposal of the ruling APC would be too discomforting for the PDP. This may have accounted for the intensive effort to keep him in the fold. It is thought that If Atiku has his own resources to run, many of the other candidates of the party at other levels of the contest are not similarly endowed and will need a helping hand from Wike.  

As it has now turned out, there are growing concerns among party bigwigs that the peace efforts cannot be perpetually elastic and that the time has come for the party to move on even if its elders would continue the engagements with Wike and his allies who by now should be seeing the handwriting on the wall that they are fast losing the ground. The BoT delegation last Tuesday was, therefore, essentially a soft-landing opportunity offered to the bellyaching camp to make a turnaround.  

It is, however, not too late for the Wike camp to utilise this opportunity at the proposed follow-up meeting in Abuja. As it stands today, it needs the PDP more than the party needs it. This is why when Wike said his people would not leave the party, he was seen to be merely stating the obvious reality that his camp cannot by law field its candidates on any other platform than the PDP. And there is little or no assurance that a bipartisan voting strategy on Election Day will not have unintended outcomes.  

Adebiyi, the managing editor of THISDAY Newspapers, writes from bolaji.adebiyi@thisdaylive.com